Seems to me that everyone who is/was pro-Obama, a Liberal/Leftist, and/or pro-Hillary is petrified of this memo coming out. And everyone that's Conservative/Right Leaning and/or pro-Trump desperately wants this to be made public. I'll reserve judgment until I get to see things for myself but if there's evidence of wrongdoing by Obama all I can say is UH OOOOOOOH.

I don't think petrified is the right word. What makes independents and democrats upset about this is the hypocrisy displayed by Republicans who constantly attacked Hilary about her emails citing that it compromised national security, but now are readying to release a document that (1) omits important facts, as pointed out by FBI Director Wray and Rod Rosenstein, both Trump appointees; (2) puts crosshairs on the FBI and the Justice Department for the sake of politics, sowing public mistrust among two important pillars of our democracy (that are supposed to be independent); (3) is devised by Devin Nunes, who has exhibited extremely shady behavior around the Russia investigation; (4) appears to have been altered further following the Republican vote to release the memo; all while yes, damaging national security. Add that to the fact that the Republicans voted against releasing the rebuttal by the Democrats, and it's clear that House Republicans have no interest in displaying the full story to the American public. Transparency my backside. Even Republican senators are concerned about this.

But yes we'll see. I'm not concerned about it, but it's clearly a major misstep for our democracy (what else is new under this administration?). I think whatever is presented in that memo is easily refutable, just like every other weak lie and excuse presented by Trump and his family. I'm not saying Trump is guilty, but he, his family, and members of his transition team sure act like they have something to hide.

With regard to Hilary for those who love to use her as a convenient distraction from Trump - yeah, lock her up if she's truly guilty of wrongdoing. Any crooked politician deserves such a fate, Dem or Repub.

LOL can I assume you lean left? I have zero issues admitting Trump is basically a butthole whose moral compass has been broken for years but his first year he's put up with more nonsense than anyone in my lifetime and has done a decent (not great) job so far. Will it continue? No clue. But even your post seems to wreak of hope that things fall apart for him. If I'm wrong feel free to correct me. I'm probably about 55% right leaning myself and while I tend to vote Republican I didn't vote for him.

- It will overemphasize the role of the Steele dossier in gaining a FISA warrant on Carter Page, ignoring or understating the use of other evidence and that the FBI had been watching him since at least 2013, as well as other Trump associates being monitored and now indicted.

- It will heavily overemphasize Rosenstein's role in renewing the warrant, because the biggest immediate purpose of the memo is to build a case for firing or forcing him out due to his refusal to undermine Mueller on Trump's behalf.

- Having convinced a gullible base through sheer repetition that the dossier has already been proven fake, Trump and toadies in Congress and the media will shriek that the entire investigation top to bottom is now corrupt and illegitimate. They will begin a drumbeat for firing Rosenstein, and either firing or completely hamstringing Mueller.

- The mainstream press will inadvertently further legitimize it by describing it as "controversial" and presenting both sides of the argument similarly with little editorial evaluation. They will be accused of massive partisan bias regardless by the same people carrying water for a President smearing federal investigators to derail a major investigation into himself.

- Lots of coordinated demands to investigate the "real scandal" involving the Obama admin gathering intel on a foreign attack on our country. Think the unmasking flap times ten. Some dog and pony "investigations" in Congress but none go anywhere other than pumping out fresh stories to eat up media oxygen.

- It will come out before long that Nunes was working directly with the White House, again, to write the memo. He's already refusing to answer whether he did so or not. The stories will be labeled as fake for reasons to be determined later or clumsily assembled on the fly.

After that, who knows. If Trump manages to kill the investigation by stacking the FBI and DoJ with lackeys we will go to a very dark place. Not sure how likely that is. But things will probably get worse before they get better.

So the Nunes Memo is out and this held up pretty well, except it's even flimsier than I expected. Rosenstein is barely mentioned, but more importantly neither is the fact that you need further evidence every 90 days to justify probable cause when renewing a FISA warrant, which happened at least 3 times with Page.

The biggest charge is a statement that McCabe testified they wouldn't have sought a FISA warrant on Page without the Steele dossier, but they don't have any transcripts to verify this, and they completely dodge the question of whether there was probable cause to grant the warrant in the first place, which is the real legal issue. If I had to guess I'd say that this is one of the major areas the FBI believes is creating an inaccurate narrative through omission.

Overall the intent seems to be trying to claim the FBI tried to rig the election by getting one specific warrant 2 weeks before the election, when Page wasn't part of the campaign at all anymore. They then sprang into action by not leaking or publicizing it, while publicly reopening the Clinton investigation and agents leaking to the NYT that the Trump camp was in the clear. It's absurd on its face but we're in pure crazy town.

This memo is just as much Trump as Nunes. Trump's next move is going to be to attempt to fire Rob Rosenstein. The whole memo is political hogwash to push back against Mueller. Trump was told he couldn't fire Mueller by white house counsel, so he is doing whatever he can to delegitimize the FBI without doing that.

This memo is just as much Trump as Nunes. Trump's next move is going to be to attempt to fire Rob Rosenstein. The whole memo is political hogwash to push back against Mueller. Trump was told he couldn't fire Mueller by white house counsel, so he is doing whatever he can to delegitimize the FBI without doing that.

Yup - RW figures are already starting the drumbeat that Rosenstein should be fired or recuse himself, for...reasons. It's unclear even based on the memo's narrative why that should happen. It even acknowledges the Trump investigation started with Papadopoulus in July, rather than Page in October. It's only scandalous to people who've already decided there's a scandal.

The flipside of this: I'm not sure what all the noise from the IC and Dems about this compromising national security is, with one major exception - it may very well have revealed that Carter Page is still under surveillance, which could be a big deal if we were getting useful info from him. It's also possible sources will be much more reluctant to work with us if they think their work could be unveiled for partisan hackery.

The other major exception of course is that I know jack about intelligence gathering so there are probably issues I'm not thinking of.

The flipside of this: I'm not sure what all the noise from the IC and Dems about this compromising national security is, with one major exception - it may very well have revealed that Carter Page is still under surveillance, which could be a big deal if we were getting useful info from him. It's also possible sources will be much more reluctant to work with us if they think their work could be unveiled for partisan hackery.

The other major exception of course is that I know jack about intelligence gathering so there are probably issues I'm not thinking of.

I would think this also puts the IC in the awkward position of either doing nothing and looking biased or releasing relevant information that could discredit the memo but would also be giving up more classified information and therefore looking biased the other way.

Seems like it doesn't really matter what was in the memo it was all about the build up and knowing that Trump supporters will just assume it means everyone was biased against Trump when really it didn't show much of anything at all.

The flipside of this: I'm not sure what all the noise from the IC and Dems about this compromising national security is, with one major exception - it may very well have revealed that Carter Page is still under surveillance, which could be a big deal if we were getting useful info from him. It's also possible sources will be much more reluctant to work with us if they think their work could be unveiled for partisan hackery.

The other major exception of course is that I know jack about intelligence gathering so there are probably issues I'm not thinking of.

To me this is the big one. It was only 9 months ago that Trump showed off Israeli intelligence to Russia because he was trying to impress them. Now that the legislative branch has also shown a willingness to divulge state secrets for political ends, itís going to further erode our credibility, ultimately hurting international cooperation. In the long run, this damages national security.

The flipside of this: I'm not sure what all the noise from the IC and Dems about this compromising national security is, with one major exception - it may very well have revealed that Carter Page is still under surveillance, which could be a big deal if we were getting useful info from him. It's also possible sources will be much more reluctant to work with us if they think their work could be unveiled for partisan hackery.

The other major exception of course is that I know jack about intelligence gathering so there are probably issues I'm not thinking of.

The thing I don't get is why people are trying to use the memo as a reason to fire Rosenstein. Regardless of what one might think of the memo, the FISA warrant pre-dates Rosenstein being in his current position.

There are so many things wrong with the memo to begin with, I honestly can't understand why Trump would want to release it, let alone try to justify any actions as a result of it.